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WHAT CLAIM HAS THE MINISTRY 



— TJPON THE — 



YOUNG MEN OF THE CHURCH? 



WHAT IS A "CALL" TO THE MINISTRY? 



A PRIZE ESSAY, 



By T. S.'Childs, D.D., 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 



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AUTHOR'S REQUEST, 



With the deepest conviction that no utterance of Christian truth, 
no effort in Christian service, can be effective without the seal of the 
Holy Spirit, the writer would venture to ask of every reader of this 
little tract, at least one earnest prayer, that it may be blessed in guiding 
into the Christian ministry many whom Christ shall call to it, and in 
guiding from it any who would enter without such call. 



The Evangelical Education Society 

Of the Protestant Episcopal Church offered 
Si 25 for the best essay . of about ten octavo pages. 
that should set forth the duty of young men of 
the Church in regard to the Christian ministry; 
■with brie' hints as to the nature of a "call" to 
the ministry. Competition was invited mom 
ministers and laymen of all denominations in 
this country and in England. The (Bishops of 
(Delaware, Ohio and (Pennsylvania were the 
Committee of award. Sixty =three essays were 
received mom Great (Britain, Canada and the 
United States. From these the Committee selected 
this as best adapted to the object in view, and as 
entitled- to the award. 






AUTHOR'S REQUEST. 



With the deepest conviction that no utterance of Christian truth, 
no effort in Christian service, can be effective without the seal of the 
Holy Spirit, the writer would venture to ask of every reader of this 
little tract, at least one earnest prayer, that it may be blessed in guiding 
into the Christian ministry many whom Christ shall call to it, and in 
guiding from it any who would enter without such call. 



THE CLAIMS OF THE MINISTRY 
UPON THE YOUNG MEN OF THE CHURCH. 



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Prxze; Essay by 1\ S. Childs, rxiD., 
Washington, EX C. 



My Dear Friend: You ask my judgment in regard 
to your work in life. You say your attention has been called 
to the ministry, but you cannot yet see that it is your duty 
to enter it. 

Let me put before you very simply a few considerations 
that I hope may help you in the decision of this question; 

1. You are a Christian, as you trust As such you are not 
your own, you are bought with a price. Your time, your 
talent, your influence, your body and soul, by the most 
sacred purchase, belong to Christ. This is one of the com- 
monplaces of Christianity, but it is a great faci, ; it is the 
starting point of every true Christian life. 

2. I may assume that you want to do all the good you can 
in the world. What is there worth living for, after all, ex- 
cept this ? Life is a poor thing if we cannot leave the world 
the better for our having been in it. Here the Master is 
our example. He came not to be ministered unto, but to 
minister and to give His life a ransom for many. There is 
nothing higher for the disciple than to be as his Master, 
nothing better for the servant than to be as his Lord. 

3. You have but one life. ^VVhat you do for Christ and 
the world you must do now. You cannot come back to cor- 



rect mistakes. And it is a terrible mistake to make a mis- 
take of life. No worldly success can balance it. If the 
great end of life is missed, life itself is a tragic failure. 

4. Your one life is a short one. Your decision must be 
made soon, and the work to be done under it must be done 
soon. There are few more impressive thoughts than the 
shortness of the time in which the most weighty and 
solem responsibilities of life are compressed, and in which 
they must be met. 

5. I should fail in the full force of these suggestions if I 
did not remind you that the only light in which you can 
safely settle this question is the light of the final judgment. 
In the mists and questionings of this generation we are in 
danger of overlooking the great realities of the future. But 
if Christianity has any truth at all, it has this: In all the 
scenes of the present it points us forward, calmly, cease- 
lessly, to the hour — not far off — when we must each give 
an account for the one talent or the five; and when the 
eternal issue will be the doom of the servant who hid his 
Lord's money, or the "well-done" of the good and faithful. 

Now with these considerations, I do not affirm that it is 
your duty to enter the ministry. I cannot take that re- 
sponsibility. That must be settled between yourself and 
God. And I admit fully that he does not call every Chris 
tian young man to this work. He has other fields of service 
in which he needs his followers. But what I say is this : 
You are called to examine the question, honestly, candidly, 
and with sincere prayer that God will show you His will. 
You are called to study the field, to judge fairly of your own 
qualifications, to observe the Providences of God, to seek the 
guidance and to watch the influences of the Divine Spirit 
upon your mind in reference to this greatest of questions 
that can concern you except that of your own salvation. 
Whatever the result, even if the inquiry should satisfy you 
that the ministry is not your calling, it will be a great 



comfort to you, in the hour when you will need comfort, that 
yon did not refuse to examine the subject faithfully and 
concientiously. 

Now, omitting all discussion of the need of the Chris- 
tian ministry in general — for we shall agree in this — 
let me set before you the special need of an increase of 
that ministry. And here your question must first be met. 
It is a fair question, and in view of the facts, a natural one: 
" Is not the ministry already full ? Are there not many in 
it who are reduced to the most humiliating straits to obtain 
places, and many who are quite unoccupied? Where is the 
evidence of a need of any addition, for the present at least, 
to the ranks of the ministry?" I admit the force of the 
question. I am not surprised that you, and many with 
you, are stumbled by it. As far as our own country is con- 
cerned, the facts do seem to present a formidable objection 
to my plea. . Let us look them in the face. If they shall 
suggest that the want is not so much more men, as it is 
different men from those of us who are now in the field, men 
with more spiritual power, more consecration, more simple 
devotion to Christ through a greater fulness of the Holy 
Spirit, it will not be a useless suggestion. 

The population of our country is something over 50,000,- 
000. For this number we have, according to the latest offic- 
ial publications, and the most reliable estimates, not less than 
120,000 ministers of religion of all kinds. This gives one 
minister for every 417 of the population. Deducting the 
Methodist "local preachers," Roman Catholic and Mormon 
priests, and all non-evangelical ministers, we have left 
over 70,000 who would be classed as teaching a Chris- 
tianity more or less evangelical. We still have, therefore, 
one evangelical minister for every 714 of the popu- 
lation. But suppose we reduce the number still more. 
Let us assume that 20,000 of the 70,000 are disabled, 
or retired from the active work of the ministry, or dis- 
qualified in some way; we still have over 50,000 



evangelical preachers of the gospel in the land. In other 
words, after this heavy reduction, we have one minister to 
every thousand of the population young and old, Protestant, 
Romish, Mormon and infidel. This would seem a large 
supply. At least it would not indicate any perilous dearth 
in the ministry at present. Whatever grave defects may 
exist as to their distribution, the country, as a whole, is 
better supplied with ministers — almost three to one — than 
it was at the opening of the century. This is one side of 
the case. Let us look upon the other. 

In the year 1800 the population of the country was 
5,308,483. Of this number it is estimated there were 
365,000 communicants in the evangelical churches. This 
would leave 4,943,483 outside that communion. In 1850 
the population was 23,191,876, of which 3,529,988 were 
reckoned as evangelical communicants, giving 19,661,888 
outside that communion. In 1880, the population was 
50,155,783 of which the evangelical communicants were 
10,065,953 leaving 40,089,830 beyond the pale of evan- 
gelical Christian communion. That is, in round numbers, 
there are 20,000,000 more souls to be gathered into the 
communion of the evangelical churches in our land now 
than there were in 1850; and 35,000,000 more than in 1800. 
In other words there are more than seven times as many 
outside the communion of the evangelical church in our 
land to-day as the whole population of the country eighty 
years ago. These facts bear their own testimony. They 
indicate, with sufficient clearness and solemnity, that 
the work of the Christian ministry in our country is not 
done; the whitened harvest is not yet reaped. 

But you cannot well decide the question if you confine 
your view to our own land and its wants. This is a small 
fragment of the great domain of Christian effort. The 
field is the world. He who is willing to listen to the Master's 
call cannot take in his view, less than this. If the apparent 
contradiction of facts in our own land staggers you, here 
are facts appallingly simple and clear. 



In the year 1800, the common estimates rarely placed the 
population of the world as high as 800,000,000. Let us sup- 
pose it even 1,000,000,000 — an estimate that would usually 
be considered extravagant. Of this 1,000,000,000, it is 
claimed that there were 200,000,000 Christians of all kinds, 
Greek, Eomish and Protestant. This leaves 800,000,000 
of the non-Christian population of the world in 1800. The 
present population is reckoned, by the highest authorities, 
at about 1,400,000,000. Of these, 400,000,000 are claimed as j 
nominal Christians. Suppose these to be all true Christians — 
and none will claim that — we have 1,000,000,000 yet unsaved. 
That is, there are QOOflOOflOO more souls to be reached and 
rescued by the Gospel than there were eighty years ago! The 
increase during this century, of the field of work for the 
ministry, is equal to that of four entire nations each as- 
large as the United States. If we adopt a lower, and per- 
haps more reasonable estimate of population for 1800, the 
conclusion becomes yet more startling. Does any man ask 
whether there is still work for the Christian ministry ? 
"Go teach all nations." The command is as imperative 
as when it was given. It is more urgent and more im- 
pressive, by the vastly greater work yet to be done, the 
mightier mass that wait to receive its benediction. 

But even this does not present the call in all its urgency. 
If we consider it in reference to our evangelical Protestant 
Christianity, of the 400,000,000 nominal Christians, Pro- 
testantism can hardly claim more than 120,000,000, at the 
most. When from this body you have deducted those 
whose adherence to Protestanism is only nominal, or acci- 
dental, and those who have no sympathy with it as a per- 
sonal, spiritual faith, it would be a generous allowance that 
would grant us 50,000,000 as a vital working force of 
Christian life in the mass of humanity. Against this we 
have more than 800,000,000 heathen, 150,000,000 Moham- 
medans, with the added millions of Jews, infidels and un- 
believers. And yet the command stands: "Preach the Gos- 



6 

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pel to every creature." Surely, if there is anything in the 
world's bitter need of the Gospel to constitute a call to preach 
it, you have it here. The field is vast enough, and the want 
terrible enough, to claim the consecrated talent and power 
of the strongest and best men the Church has to give. 

Let us look for a moment at the provision the churches of our 
land are making to meet this want. The 115 evangelical 
Theological Seminaries of the country reported for 1883,3,817 
students. Suppose these to be all in the ministry to-day, 
and all to claim the apostolic honor and grace of preaching 
the Gospel to the Gentiles and the non-Christian nations, 
every man of them could have a parish of over 250,000 
souls. No, the ministry is not yet full. There is work 
enough, and there is motive enough, to every man who is 
willing to hear the Master's voice. The appalling need and 
the eternal peril of the 1,000,000,000 souls yet unreached by 
the Gospel are a plea to whose power and pathos words can 
add nothing. Sure I am, that if you shall have heard and 
listened to that plea, when your work here is done, life will 
have been found by you well worth the living. 

There are other pleas that I can only suggest. It is not 
the lost alone that need the ministry; it is not for 
these alone that the ministry is given. The saved need 
it as well; and our view comes far short of the truth 
if it does not take in this field of service. Every 
Christian needs the Christian ministry. The strongest 
souls need the constant strength of the word, the ordinances, 
the sacraments. The young and the old, the doubting and 
the troubled, the burdened and weary, the sorrowful and 
suffering — what countless multitudes — are ever needing the 
tender and faithful ministries of the Christian pastor and 
guide. The hidden griefs and trials of God's children give 
a great and wonderful field for the best work of the Christ- 
ian minister; and I doubt if there is any work in which 
he comes nearer to his Master, or is dearer to God. 
A Christian ministry is demanded by the Christian 



Church perpetually; and if the whole world were converted 
to-day we should need a thousand evangelical pastors for 
every hundred that we have now. We should need them to 
save the Church herself from confusion, disaster and 
wreck. 

There is another plea, which to a thoughtful, earnest and 
ingenuous mind must have weight. I mean that drawn 
from the claims of Christian patriotism. Our country needs 
intensely and speedily, the permeating power of Christian 
morality. Nothing else can save us. No greater boon can 
be given to any land than a faithful, godly, Christian min- 
istry. No greater catastrophe can overtake any land than 
the loss of such a ministry. The future of our country is 
bound up more potently with the character of its ministers 
than with that of its political leaders. The questions that 
are touching to the quick both Church and State, and whose 
decision will settle so largely the destiny of the nation, give 
to the pulpit a more magnificent field of thought and utter- 
ance than any in the whole domain of mere political life. 
The very existence of a personal God on whom men and 
nations are dependent and to whom they are responsible, a 
law of righteousness binding individuals and empires, the 
sacredness of the family and of the Sabbath, with the supreme 
themes of human ruin and divine salvation, a lost world and 
an incarnate God, the Cross, the Resurrection, a life in 
Christ purified here and glorified hereafter, out of Christ a 
death whose measure is eternity — and you have a sphere of 
subjects and motives that tax the final reaches of the human 
intellect, and the profoundest emotions of the human 
heart. 

There is one more plea, the greatest and the last. I mean 
the glory of Christ. As a Christian, this is the end of your 
life whether in the ministry or out of it. But peculiarly 
and emphatically is this the end of the ministry. It is a 
lost life that does not bring glory to Christ; it is the most suc- 
cessful life that glorifies Him most. The success or the 



8 

failure of His own work — if we dare speak of failure — He has 
been pleased to bind up with the preaching of the Gos- 
pel. As far as that fails, salvation fails; the success of that 
is the success of His mission. He as well as the world 
waits for the issue. He waits for the jo) r that was set 
before Him; He waits to see of the travail of His soul that 
He may be satisfied. This is the mightiest plea of the 
Christian ministry, and the most hopeful. He who goes 
to his work under it does not go at a peradventure. He 
works on the line with the Holy Spirit whose seal is the 
only hope of the ministry, and whose office is to glorify 
Christ. He works consciously with God as well as for God. 
His work cannot be a failure, nor can his reward. Whatever 
the immediate issue, his ministry shall be "a sweet savor 
unto God, both in them that are saved and in them that 
perish." And when his work is done he can say, as Luther 
did upon his death-bed: "Thee, O Lord, have I known; 
thee have I loved; thee have I taught; thee have I trusted; 
and now into thy hands I commend my spirit." 

A CALL TO THE MINISTRY. 

I must notice briefly, your further question: "What is a 
'call' to the ministry?" The question is one of a good deal 
of difficulty and delicacy, and we need a divine guidance 
in undertaking to answer it. With a deep sense of this, let 
me indicate a few points that seem suggested by the very 
nature of the subject. Obviously, a call to the ministry 
involves those general gifts that the character of the work 
demands — real piety above all, a good mind, well balanced, 
and a reasonable amount of health. A brilliant intellect? 
however desirable, is not essential; nor is great physical 
vigor, though the more of this the better; but it is wonder- 
ful what men of feeble constitutions have done for Christ 
and His , Church; as witness, Henry Marty n and David 
Brainard. With these qualifications must be, of course, the 
requisite education, or the opportunity of securing it. The 



judgment of wise and judicious friends, as teachers and 
pastors, is to be considered. But they must be judicious 
friends. Great mistakes have been made and great injury 
done to the Church and to young men themselves by the 
counsel of partial parents, unwise pastors, easy and amiable 
teachers. The act of putting a young man into the sacred 
ministry is too serious, it involves too many and too solemn 
interests, to be submitted to anything but the most intelli- 
gent and faithful Christian judgment. 

But these are, after all, only the externals of the call. 
There must be something more than ail this. The 
first question put to one who presents himself for the 
ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church is this: 
"Do you trust that you are inwardly moved by the 
Holy Ghost to take upon you this office and ministra- 
tion?" If I do not err, this points to the decisive ele- 
ment in a call to the Christian ministry. A man 
may have all other qualifications, but if he has not this, he 
will be a failure. He must be so, and worse. He must be a 
sacrilegious intruder into the most sacred office, a profaner 
of the most holy mysteries. One of the most distinguished 
preachers and teachers of the American Church used to say 
to his students, as reported, that no man ought to go out as 
a foreign missionary whose conscience would let him stay at 
home. I believe the principle extends to the entire ministry. 
I would say that no man should be in it who can stay out of 
it with a clear conscience; but no man can stay out of it with 
a clear conscience if the Spirit calls him to it. There will be an 
inward impression, a strong conviction, that he ought to preach 
the Gospel, a spiritual pressure that'he cannot resist without 
a struggle. He will know the "woe is unto me if I preach 
not the Gospel." I think I am not alone in being deeply 
and growingly impressed with the conviction that the 
weakness and peril of the Church is in an uncalled ministry. 
Certainly we need more ministers, but far more than 
this, we need ministers full of the Holy Ghost and of power. 



10 

We need those on whom the seal of God is set. One such 
man is more effective than a hundred without this. 
The strength of the Church and of the ministry is simply 
the strength of the Holy Spirit. It is useless to multiply 
our ministers if we cannot increase their spiritual power. 
You cannot give too much weight to this. Enter the 
ministry, by all means, if God shall call you, but see to it 
that you are "inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost." It was 
wise counsel, that of an honored clergyman, on his death 
bed, in the city of New York, to his only son: "If you are 
prepared for it, my wish is that you preach the Gospel. It 
is the greatest work and the best work. But beware of becom- 
ing a minister unless you are prepared for it." It was the 
calm and solemn judgment of the devoted Legh Rich- 
mond that "he would rather follow his son to the grave 
than see him in the Church without being fitted for such a 
sacred office." 

In a divine call to the ministry there is, I suppose, not 
only a conviction that one ought to preach, and a desire to 
preach; it is a specific desire to preach the truth of God. 
The Christian minister is called to preach Christian truth 
and it is safe to say that no man is called by the Spirit to 
preach His truth to whom He has not taught that truth. A 
man who is in a state of mind to cavil with the word of 
God, to trifle with its truths, to explain away its teachings, 
or who is ignorant of those truths, is surely not called by 
the Spirit to teach them to others. "He whom God hath sent, 
speaketh the words of God. " 

Still more specific, I think, in such a call, is the desire to 
preach Christ. General interest in the Scriptures is not 
enough. A man may be deeply interested in the literary 
beauties of the Bible, its history, its poetry, its prophecy; 
he may be exceptionally skilful in its exegesis and learned 
in its doctrines, and yet have no call to the Gospel ministry. 
The heart of all the work of the ministry, as the heart of 
all Christian thought, is Christ. We may be sure that the 



11 

Spirit whose office is to take of the things of Christ and 
show them, does not call any man to the ministry of Christ 
to whom he does not show Christ as the centre of all Christ- 
ian teaching. 

I will go a step further, and say there must be a desire to 
preach Christ crucified. This was the great object of the 
Apostle's knowledge, and the end of his ambition. The 
Christian ministry cannot safely have a less or another 
object. Christ crucified, Christ as the atoning sacrifice 
for sin — this, sealed by the Spirit, is the world's last 
hope, its only hope. The preaching of this is the great 
work, and comparatively the only work of the Gospel 
ministry. The man who does not feel called to this; 
who has no strong desire to preach a crucified Christ to a 
lost world; whose heart has not so found and felt the Cross 
as his own great hope and consolation that he mast speak of 
it to others, can hardly have valid evidence of a call to the 
Christian ministry. This involves that the preacher believes 
that the world is lost without Christ. He came to seek 
and to save the lost. His mission was to them. His Gospel 
is for them. No man can preach Christ who does not preach 
Him as a Saviour for sinners. No man can preach Him 
fully and faithfully who does not believe in the terrible 
nature and doom of sin, from w 7 hich there is no other name 
than the name of Christ by which men must be saved. 

With this conviction, there will be, I think, to one called 
by the Holy Spirit, a willingness and a readiness to be 
wholly given to the work of the ministry. The Spirit never 
calls a man with a reservation. It is to be feared that there 
is often a sad mistake here. Young men enter the ministry 
with other aims and ambitions; for literary leisure and 
fame; as a preparation for professorships or official station, 
or some work to which preaching shall be a mere adjunct; 
or as a means of support. Such a man can hardly look for 
success in the ministry. In this greatest of all works 
there can be no divided interest or divided heart. "Give 



12 

thyself wholly" to these things, is the charge of the Spirit to 
him who deals with the high mysteries of the ministration 
of life. The man who does this cannot make a failure 
either of his work or of his reward. Whatever may be the 
immediate issue, the final result is sure. "Without doubt," 
says good old Thomas Brooks, "those ministers shall be 
high in heaven who make it their heaven to hold forth 
Christ, and to win souls to Christ; who are willing to be 
anything, to be nothing, that Christ may be all in all to poor 
souls." 

In the Register of the officers and graduates of the 
United States Military Academy at West Point, under the 
record of 1839, is the name of " M. S. Culbertson," followed 
by the words: "Died August 25, 1862, at Shanghai, China, 
aged 41." It is a brief record, but there is a history behind 
it. Young Culbertson was a man of superior promise. 
After his graduation and a brief service in the army, he 
was appointed assistant professor in the Academy. His 
prospects for the future were as bright, perhaps, as those of 
any man who ever left the institution. But the prayers of 
a godly mother were behind him, and a higher call was 
upon him. He resigned his position in the army, studied for 
the ministry, and went out one of an early and noble band 
of missionaries to China. In the Taeping rebellion his 
military knowledge and skill enabled him to protect suc- 
cessfully the American interests at Shanghai, and drew from 
the American Minister to China the enthusisastic remark : 
"Culbertson, if you were at home you might be a Major-Gen- 
eral." "No doubt," he replied, "I might. Men I drilled are in 
that position;" and he named them — Sherman, Van Vliet 
Tower, Thomas, Newton, Rosecrans — and he might have ad- 
ded, Lyon, Reynolds and Grant. "But," he said, earnestly, "7 
would not change places with one of them, I consider that 
there is no post of influence on earth equal to that of a man 
who is permitted to preach the Gospel to four hundred mil- 
lions of his fellow-men" Soon after he fell at his post, 



13 

dying unknown by his country, unhonored beyond the 
little circle that knew his work and his worth. His 
comrades and pupils live crowned with a nation's honors, 
or have died to be remembered by a nation's gratitude and 
veneration. And is this the end? No! History is not yet 
finished; the account has not yet been made up; the final 
decision has not been rendered. "They that be wise shall 
shine as the brightest of the firmament, and they that turn 
many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever." May 
this, my brother, be your work and your reward. 



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